0:00

I'm pulling away from the curb because I

0:02

got my son off at school. We all

0:04

know what that means. It's time for their drive

0:06

to work. Okay, so today's

0:08

topic. I want to

0:11

dive in deep. There's a

0:13

phrase that Richard Garfield used

0:15

when he talked about magic.

0:17

And that phrase is, it's

0:19

a game bigger than the

0:21

box. So I want to really

0:23

dive in deep on what that means. There's

0:26

a lot of challenges for magic, and

0:28

I just wanted to sort of, it's

0:30

an interesting concept that magic obviously

0:32

is very much built around, but I

0:34

want to spend it a whole

0:36

podcast, what are you talking about? It's

0:38

an interesting idea, and it's

0:40

really something that has

0:42

a lot of challenges to it, and a lot

0:44

of the making of magic with which you're trying

0:46

to solve the problem of how to make a

0:49

game bigger than the box. So,

0:51

let's start with what exactly that means. What

0:53

does bigger than the box mean? So

0:55

let's say you go buy a normal game,

0:57

you buy Monopoly or Scrabble or Clue

0:59

or pick your game. When

1:01

you buy Monopoly set,

1:04

everybody who buys Monopoly set

1:06

gets the same pieces. You

1:09

get a certain board with, you

1:11

know, now Monopoly as an example can

1:13

be skinned differently, maybe Different properties

1:15

have different names based on however you

1:17

skin it. But the reality is

1:19

the core essence of the game, the

1:21

actual game pieces, you have

1:23

a board with 40 squares, you

1:25

have cards that represent the property, you

1:27

have dice and pieces and money

1:29

and community chest and chance, and

1:31

you have all the same

1:33

component pieces. Like I said, Monopoly's

1:36

a game where sometimes they skin it

1:38

differently. There's different flavors there. But the

1:40

core mechanics are the same. And

1:43

if two different people buy Monopoly

1:45

at two different places, they get the

1:47

same game. So the

1:49

idea is that the game experience for

1:51

the end user, for the player, is

1:53

the same no matter where you buy

1:55

the game. And

1:57

so the idea

1:59

is that most games are a

2:02

complete experience, meaning when you purchase

2:04

the game, everything that's needed for

2:06

the game is in the game.

2:08

And so, as a game designer,

2:10

when you're designing these type of

2:12

games, well, you just balance everything.

2:14

know, you make the game with

2:16

all the component pieces, and then

2:18

you have a sense of what

2:20

the audience is going to experience,

2:22

because what you're testing is what

2:25

they are going to experience. Okay,

2:28

but it is possible for a

2:30

game to have more pieces than exists

2:32

within any one copy of the

2:34

game. That's what Richard means. that the

2:36

game is bigger than the box,

2:38

that you could buy the game, the

2:40

box, and open it up, and

2:42

not all the pieces are in the

2:44

box. Now, this

2:46

idea, magic did not invent bigger than

2:48

the box, bigger than the box invented

2:51

before magic. So

2:53

the two big ways that it

2:55

pre -existed actually are, so there's

2:57

a couple of what we

2:59

call core hobby industry, core game

3:01

hobby industries. One is

3:03

miniatures, one is role -playing,

3:05

And the third one is trading

3:07

cards. Obviously, we'll get to trading cards

3:09

in a second. But the other two predate

3:11

magic, and each of those, interestingly, are

3:13

bigger than the box. And one

3:16

could argue that maybe one

3:18

of the core elements of becoming

3:20

a lifestyle game is that

3:22

there is a component element that

3:24

the game is, you know, Bigger

3:27

than the box means a lot of things. A, it

3:29

means that all the component pieces are there, or not

3:31

all the pieces. There's more pieces than exists in any

3:33

one box. But also, it has a lot to do

3:35

with community, you know, that a lot

3:37

of understanding a game isn't just sitting by

3:39

yourself and playing. You can't possibly understand the whole

3:41

game if you don't have all the pieces. Okay,

3:45

so let's go back to the

3:47

very first one, which I believe is

3:49

Dungeons and Dragons. I've understood

3:51

in timing. Role -playing, not role -playing,

3:53

miniatures and role -playing both exist. I'm

3:55

not sure of my quite timeline.

3:58

I think miniatures, actually, miniatures predates

4:00

role -playing for sure. The

4:03

early miniature games is before the earliest role -playing. Role

4:05

-playing Dungeons and Dragons began in

4:07

the 70s. Miniatures predates that. A

4:10

lot of the miniatures that people know, I

4:12

guess, happen after

4:14

that. But

4:17

miniature... like

4:19

wargaming goes back actually pretty

4:21

far. So let's, we'll

4:24

start with miniatures. I guess the miniatures, not

4:26

that I think about, miniatures were first. So

4:28

the idea of a miniatures game, at

4:30

least a traditional miniatures game, especially wargaming,

4:32

is you're having a war. In fact,

4:34

the way wargaming started was when you're

4:36

actually planning an actual war, one of

4:38

the things you need to do is

4:41

you need to mark where everything is

4:43

so that you can look at the

4:45

whole field and understand what's going on.

4:47

And original wargaming was just the idea

4:49

of, well, this thing that really happens

4:51

in real wars, what if you could

4:53

do that, but there wasn't a real

4:56

war? What if you could experience the

4:58

act of having a war without, you

5:00

know, the killing and dying? Just, you

5:02

know, that was the

5:04

initial idea of ministers came

5:06

from wargaming, meaning literally matching

5:09

wars. And one of

5:11

the ideas of wargaming was, hey,

5:14

there can be different component pieces. There's

5:16

different kinds of infantry, there's different kinds

5:18

of armed units, you know, that that

5:20

part of having a war is, oh,

5:22

well, different groups can come. And

5:24

so the way that war gaming was

5:26

made early on, which is the idea

5:28

of you create some general rules, and

5:30

then you get different pieces that get

5:33

brought in. Eventually,

5:37

war gaming, like, there's a couple, so

5:39

the idea essentially is there are

5:41

more pieces that exist than you play

5:43

in any one war game. that

5:45

you, the person playing the war game,

5:47

you have some ability to pick

5:49

what pieces you play. Now

5:51

eventually, as that gets

5:53

extrapolated, and

5:55

this is where Dungeon Dragons, or

5:57

role -playing and ministers go back

5:59

and forth, role

6:01

-playing came along, and really, really,

6:04

not that fantasy didn't predate, it

6:06

did, but it really sort of

6:08

brought fantasy into gaming in a

6:10

large way, and that you started

6:12

seeing fantasy coming into miniature

6:15

gaming and so the idea is

6:17

I'm not just getting an unnormal army

6:19

like early war game is like

6:21

oh I'm getting different troops from different

6:23

places and they start getting I'm

6:25

getting orcs I'm getting elves you know

6:27

you're starting to do fantasy elements

6:30

to them and then eventually also you

6:32

will see war gaming and miniature

6:34

gaming tipping into like science fiction and

6:36

other genres but anyway the important

6:38

thing for miniatures is there's a rule

6:40

set but each person there's more

6:42

pieces than Need to be that then

6:44

need exists to play when you

6:46

play a war game or miniatures game

6:48

There's more miniatures than are needed

6:51

to play the game and normally the

6:53

way the miniatures are sold is

6:55

They sell you two pieces that you

6:57

can play with these are two

6:59

balanced armies You can go play you

7:01

don't ever have to leave that

7:03

environment if you just enjoy it, but

7:05

They sell other armies and other

7:07

component pieces and other, you know, so

7:10

you can go buy other things

7:12

and you can start to customize. And

7:14

that's the big thing about the

7:17

game bigger than the box is the

7:19

idea of customization that you, the

7:21

player, get to pick and

7:23

choose what you're playing with. Now,

7:27

mostly today, I'm talking about tabletops.

7:29

Obviously, as you start getting into video

7:31

games, a lot of these component

7:33

pieces of customizability become a very core

7:35

essence of video games. But both

7:37

miniature games and role -playing games really

7:39

predate video games. And so they have

7:41

a big influence on how video

7:44

games work. Also, trading card games would

7:46

end up having a big influence

7:48

on how video games work. But anyway,

7:50

I'm mostly talking about tabletop games

7:52

today. OK, so the idea

7:54

in miniatures is that There

7:56

are more pieces than needed

7:58

to play the And

8:01

the way that miniatures usually work is

8:03

what we call a point system. And

8:05

what that means is each piece has

8:08

a certain number of points, and the way

8:10

you balance them is you sort of

8:12

figure out how strong pieces are, and then

8:14

you can give them a point value. And

8:17

so the idea is, OK, we're going to have

8:19

a fight, and then we're to make sure that each

8:21

side has the same number of points. If

8:23

you're trying to handicap, maybe one has

8:25

more points than the other. But the idea

8:27

is the point value allows a balancing

8:29

system. So okay, I

8:32

want to play you and we each get 40

8:34

points, 50 points. I'm not a big miniature player,

8:36

but you get so many points and you can

8:38

build your armies and stuff based on that. Another

8:42

way that you can do

8:44

it is you can have what

8:46

I'll call a color system. The

8:49

idea there is that the game says,

8:51

oh, well, you get so many red things,

8:53

so many yellow things, so many blue

8:55

things. In that kind of game,

8:57

the point system, everything's balanced against each other.

8:59

The color system says, well, we want certain

9:01

component pieces, and we give you some variety

9:03

on what those are. But we kind of

9:05

balance everything that's red against each other. So

9:08

if we say you can have one red

9:10

thing or two red things, well, the red

9:12

things are equal. And maybe the blue things

9:14

are more powerful than the red things, but

9:16

it's fine. The blue things are balanced against

9:18

the other blue things. So

9:20

those are the two major systems you can

9:22

use. The thing I'll say

9:24

about miniatures in general is you kind

9:26

of build the game with a

9:29

larger system and then the component pieces

9:31

give you different flexibility, but

9:33

they are balanced against the whole system. And

9:36

they have a pretty similar

9:38

function. Like a lot of

9:40

the flexibility is, oh, I

9:42

can have different armies, but

9:44

the armies have the same basic goal

9:46

of what they do. the functionality the

9:48

armies. I mean, maybe some have certain

9:51

abilities others don't, but the basic functionality

9:53

is pretty similar. Okay,

9:56

then we get to role -playing. So role

9:58

-playing says you're going to play a

10:00

game, but the game is kind of

10:03

a storytelling game. You're going to have

10:05

somebody who functions in Dungeon Master and

10:07

D &D as the storyteller. And

10:09

then You get

10:11

to build a character, and there's a lot of criteria

10:13

you get to build on, but you have a

10:16

lot of flexibility. I mean, you

10:18

roll some number of dice to figure out abilities,

10:20

but then you can choose what

10:22

species you are, what job

10:25

you have, what kind of class

10:27

you have. What

10:29

are your strengths? What kind of equipment do

10:31

you have? What kind of tools? Do you know

10:33

magical spells? Like, there's a lot of different

10:35

component pieces you can get. And you get to

10:37

customize. Once again, that's the big thing here.

10:40

You get to customize. You get to choose who

10:42

your character is. Now, the

10:44

one thing I'll say about role -playing game

10:46

is it's not, I mean, in theory, can

10:48

win or lose. But it's not really

10:50

about winner and losing because it's a story.

10:52

Like, maybe you accomplish your task. Maybe

10:54

that's winning. But there's a lot

10:56

more... A role -playing game is more

10:58

about having fun telling the story.

11:00

No matter what happens, whether you achieve

11:03

the task or don't achieve the

11:05

task, the act of playing is

11:07

the fun part. And there's not really, there's

11:09

not winners or losers, like there isn't

11:11

a strategic game. In miniatures, there's a winner,

11:13

you're having a battle, somebody wins. In

11:16

role -playing, yeah, maybe your group accomplishes

11:18

this task and maybe that's winning

11:20

for you. But really,

11:22

that's not the point of role -playing. And

11:24

so, the fact that role -playing is

11:26

customization You don't have to

11:28

balance anything. And on top of that, you

11:30

have somebody, you know, the

11:32

game master, the duel master, dungeon

11:35

master. You have

11:37

somebody who is

11:39

helping balance things. They

11:41

are creating a system. They know what

11:43

you're capable of. They determine what's there.

11:46

And on the fly, they have some

11:48

flexibility just to make it a fun

11:50

game. Okay,

11:52

so the reason I, now we

11:54

get to magic. Okay, so in 19,

11:56

early 1990s, I'm not quite sure,

11:58

91 maybe, Richard Garfield

12:00

and his friend Mike Davis are trying

12:02

to sell the game Roborally. Basically

12:05

the story is, Richard was an inventor,

12:07

he made a lot of games, Richard

12:09

thought it was like a hobby, but

12:12

Mike Davis, his friend said, I think these are good,

12:14

we should sell them. And Richard was

12:16

like, I don't have any energy to sell

12:18

them, but if you want to sell

12:20

them, I'll split some profit with you. if

12:22

you want to help me sell them,

12:24

great. So, Mike Davis sets up

12:26

an interview with a bunch of different

12:28

places, but one of the important to our

12:30

story, one of the places is at

12:32

a very tiny role -playing game company named

12:34

Wizards of the Coast. Started

12:37

by five people, one of which was Peter

12:39

Ackerson. They loved role -playing,

12:41

they loved Dungeons and Dragons, and they

12:43

just wanted to make their own

12:45

role -playing expansions and stuff. When

12:48

Peter was working at Boeing

12:50

at the time, The company started

12:53

in his basement. But

12:56

anyway, they

12:59

come, I mean, they're really trying to sell

13:01

the game. And so they're trying, you know, Mike

13:03

Davis is trying everybody. He's

13:05

talking to every game company. And

13:07

Peter said, OK, I'm willing to see the

13:10

game. So they traveled to,

13:12

you know, I think they were in

13:14

Pennsylvania at the time. But anyway, they

13:16

traveled to Seattle. Richard's parents live in

13:18

Portland, so maybe they drove from Portland.

13:20

But anyway, they come to

13:22

visit with Peter Ackerson. They

13:24

show him the game. Peter's like, that is an

13:26

amazing game. I can't make it. Why?

13:28

The component pieces are just too much.

13:30

I'm a tiny game company. I

13:33

don't have the ability to make something with that high

13:35

cost of goods, basically, is what he says. So

13:38

Richard says, well, what can you make?

13:41

And Peter says, well, we have access to a

13:43

printer. They were working with Cartamundi

13:45

in Belgium, which is where Madge was originally

13:47

printed. We have a printer that we

13:49

work with, and we have access

13:51

to art. We know artists. There's

13:53

a local art school that we know

13:55

people who are there. So

13:58

we can make a card game that has art on it.

14:00

That's what we can make. And

14:02

then Richard went off to sort of brainstorm,

14:05

and I guess they were touring places, I think here

14:07

in Seattle, and he was at a

14:09

waterfall when this happened, and the idea

14:11

of combining trading cards and making a game

14:13

out of them. Richard had always collected

14:15

trading cards. He liked trading cards. There was

14:17

something really fun about the randomness he

14:20

didn't know what he was going to get,

14:22

and the idea to sort of hit him like

14:24

a thunderball, what if you could turn a

14:26

trading card game into a game? He

14:30

ended up adapting, what he did is

14:32

he took games he'd already made and he

14:34

adapted them. I think he tried another

14:36

game, but eventually he adapted a game he

14:38

called Five Colors. And

14:41

that was the earliest prototype

14:43

of magic. But, and now we

14:45

get back to the bigger than the box. The

14:47

thing that Richard loved about the

14:50

idea of a trapping card game was

14:52

that you wouldn't be in control

14:54

of what pieces you got. That

14:56

the pieces would be randomly

14:58

distributed. And that

15:00

was a really intriguing idea. Imagine a game in

15:02

which you don't even know what pieces you're going

15:05

to get. That the act of

15:07

the trading card means that every time

15:09

you open a booster pack, you get

15:11

to see new pieces. And that

15:13

he wanted to make a game out

15:15

of trading cards. Now,

15:17

there's a lot of challenges. Well,

15:20

it's a very cool idea. There's

15:23

a lot of core issues with it. And this

15:25

is what Richard had to solve. So

15:27

the biggest one was the bigger than the box

15:30

problem. That's why it's today's topic. So

15:32

the idea with the bigger of the

15:34

box is normally if I make a game,

15:36

I can balance the game because I

15:38

know what people are playing with. But

15:41

Richard thought it was okay, let's say

15:43

I make a game and the game

15:45

is really successful. For example, Richard like,

15:47

there's a game called Cosmic Encounter. Well,

15:49

Cosme Encounter was so successful that they

15:51

made expansions. So this is a

15:53

very popular means in board games. We make

15:55

a game that's popular. I now

15:57

make added content for the board game. And

16:00

so different people put out

16:03

Cosmic Counter over the years, but

16:05

there have been different expansions. And

16:08

the idea, for those that have never

16:10

played Cosmic Counter, you're playing alien races,

16:12

and you're having kind of a big war. A

16:15

lot of the fighting is done with cards, but there

16:17

are also cards that let you break the rules. And

16:19

then each alien has a special power, basically, so

16:21

that it shakes things up. Now,

16:25

so, Cosmic Encounter did something interesting.

16:27

I should point this out

16:29

as well. Cosmic Encounter, when you

16:31

play a game of Cosmic

16:34

Encounter, there's a randomization that happens

16:36

in that you, each player

16:38

chooses an alien. But there's

16:40

more aliens than there are players, usually,

16:42

because there's, I don't know, 12, 15,

16:44

there's a whole bunch of aliens. And

16:47

so the idea is every time you play, the

16:49

game's a little bit different because it depends on

16:51

what aliens you're playing. And so if I'm playing

16:53

one alien, one game, even if I

16:55

play the same alien, the next game, the

16:57

people I'm playing with might pick a different alien.

16:59

So the mix is always different. And

17:02

Richard really enjoyed that. Now, that

17:04

is a good example of the game.

17:06

Other stuff like Dominion would follow in this,

17:08

where there's more to the game than

17:10

you play in any one version of the

17:12

game. And Richard, I mean, I think

17:14

of all the games that inspired magic, Cosmic

17:16

Encounter might have had the biggest influence. it

17:19

both in the sense that there's some

17:21

customizability that you have some choices and

17:23

in that there's a lot of cards

17:25

that broke the rules that there's things

17:27

you could do and then but a

17:29

card could say that you could do

17:31

something that the former rules that you

17:33

couldn't do and Richard was fascinated by

17:36

that but the idea a trading card

17:38

game is a little more daunting so

17:40

in a game like Cosmic

17:42

encounter you well, you know all the

17:44

things that exist and you can balance

17:46

against those things and you can play

17:48

test those things and the number of

17:50

variables You know, I don't know how

17:53

many aliens are the original cosmic counter

17:55

15 whatever, you know And I mean

17:57

so yeah, there's a lot of comatorics

17:59

there meaning you're not testing every single

18:01

combination you could test because there's a

18:03

lot but you can test each individual

18:05

element and and get a general system,

18:07

you know balance them against the general

18:09

game if you will a very similar

18:11

model to how um

18:13

miniatures are done right it's not that

18:15

all the pieces are played at one

18:17

time but you can balance it against

18:19

the basic system and uh the thing

18:21

about miniature you know wargaming and like

18:23

games like cosmic encounter is the designer

18:25

knows the component pieces that the players

18:27

have access to and like with miniatures

18:29

you choose whether you get the pieces

18:32

or not you have total control you

18:34

want to play elves we'll go get

18:36

the elves you want to play Zombies

18:38

go get the zombies. So

18:41

those games, there

18:43

is flexibility, and

18:45

the game is bigger than the box. Well, I

18:48

would argue the cosmic counter is not bigger

18:50

than the box. Everything comes in the box. But

18:52

the idea that the game has different executions

18:54

is similar in the way to miniatures work. But

18:57

the problem here is that in order

18:59

for a trading card game to work, you

19:01

do not have control of what people

19:03

have. that you have to make a game

19:06

that no matter what they own, they

19:08

can play again, I mean, assuming they have

19:10

enough component pieces, but that they can

19:12

play the game. And

19:14

so the big question was, how do

19:16

I do that? How do I make

19:18

sure that I give you random pieces,

19:20

but you have enough pieces to play

19:22

the game? And

19:25

so there's a lot of

19:27

things that went into that. Part

19:29

of is making a game

19:31

where the component pieces, you know,

19:34

Like a lot of what Richard did

19:36

is he said okay I Need to

19:38

make different things because I I want

19:40

you to like in order for a

19:42

training card game to work at bare

19:44

minimum I need 300 different pieces And

19:46

that's assumed magic, you know never had

19:48

any expansions or anything just the base

19:51

game. It was roughly just slightly under

19:53

300 So in order to do that

19:55

Richard did a bunch of things he

19:57

made different types of cards He

19:59

made different rarities. That's another big one

20:01

I mean the different types of cards then

20:03

there's different functionality most games have different

20:05

pieces that nothing strange there He made different

20:07

rarities. That's a lot and tying into

20:09

what a trading card game is and rarities

20:11

ended up being very important I talk

20:14

a lot about as fans, but basically You

20:16

know that your audience is going to

20:18

see way more of your commons than of

20:20

your on commons and more on commons

20:22

than your rares mythic rares didn't exist when

20:24

magic started so we won't talk about

20:26

mythic rares but the idea is your

20:28

game can't live in your rares. You don't

20:30

know if people will get any of your

20:32

wares. But you have some comments that will

20:34

get a certain amount of your comments. And

20:36

if you do your as fans right, like

20:38

for example, Richard's like, well, you really kind

20:40

of want creatures to play this game. Okay,

20:42

if creatures are about half the cards, well,

20:45

you're going to get a lot of creatures.

20:47

And so he He

20:50

said, OK, I can use rarity. I

20:52

can use a core structure a trading

20:54

card game to balance a little bit.

20:56

I can control exactly what they'll get,

20:58

but I can control percentages to a

21:00

certain extent. OK, but

21:02

then became the bigger problem is

21:04

he loved the idea that you choose

21:06

what to play with. You build

21:08

your own deck. You customize your deck.

21:11

And that is interesting like yes, you

21:13

can customize your army in role -playing or

21:15

customize your character Sorry customize your army

21:17

in miniatures customize your character in role

21:19

-playing But normally each of those This

21:21

is sort of like it's a game

21:24

in which you bring everything to the

21:26

table like even in a miniatures Like

21:28

the board is kind of a given

21:30

like everybody's playing on the same board

21:32

now given I know this miniatures you

21:34

got different boards and stuff But at

21:36

least the base game has a base

21:38

board with magic. It's like What

21:40

you are playing with, what you're experiencing, there's

21:43

so much diversity. You

21:45

and I can both make a magic deck,

21:47

and they can be radically different. We may not

21:49

use the same card type. We may not

21:51

use the same color. Our

21:53

strategy to win might be completely different.

21:56

Maybe I'm attacking with creatures and trying to beat

21:58

you quickly, and you're a control deck, there's no

22:00

creature that's gonna mill me out. Those are very

22:02

different experiences, but the game has to handle both

22:04

of those. So, the

22:06

big problem that Richard had, tackles

22:09

what he called the queen problem. And I've tried

22:11

for this before. So if you think of chess,

22:14

and he likes to think of chess, imagine you

22:16

had chess, but instead of the six pieces that

22:18

come with chess, there were more than six pieces. And

22:20

if you get into chess,

22:24

one of the things that people who are really

22:26

into chess do is it's fun to experiment

22:28

with the idea of other pieces. It's not how

22:30

chess is played. But I mean, there's definitely

22:32

people who goof around with chess variants, where these

22:34

pieces exist. And how would it change things?

22:36

Or even just taking the existing pieces and randomizing

22:38

where they start. A lot of

22:40

experimental chess will do stuff like that.

22:44

So Richard was like, OK, if I can

22:46

choose any pieces that I want, How

22:49

do I make sure you're not playing with,

22:51

you know, just so you have to have

22:53

16 pieces? Well, you need a king that's

22:55

the win condition. Well, why wouldn't I play

22:57

15 queens? Like, why would I

22:59

bother to play a bishop or a rook

23:01

or a pawn? And he

23:03

thought, okay, there's like point systems.

23:05

That's how miniatures work. But a

23:07

point system is complex. Really,

23:10

he wanted something where just, hey, you

23:12

can play whatever you want to play. I'm not gonna tell you

23:14

what you can or can't play. But

23:16

he needed some way to sort

23:18

of restrict things so that every

23:20

deck isn't just the most powerful

23:22

cards. And

23:24

there's a bunch of ways he did it.

23:26

Rarity I already talked about. Obviously, you

23:28

can put the things that are most warping

23:30

high at rarity so every player doesn't

23:33

have access to all of them. This

23:35

also, as soon as we first made the

23:37

game, Magic became so popular that a lot of

23:39

things shifted. Like, if it was a normal

23:41

game and you just went to the store and

23:43

you bought stuff and it's random and the

23:45

only way to get cards specifically is to go

23:47

trade with your friends, that's a different dynamic

23:49

from where magic ended up. But

23:51

it's hard to plan for a phenomenon, so.

23:54

So he said, okay, how do I make

23:56

sure that there are things that go, want

23:58

to go in different decks? And

24:00

so the two big, so you ever heard me

24:02

talk about the Golden Tri Factor, the concept of trading

24:05

card game, the three genius ideas which are created.

24:07

The idea of a trading card game, the

24:09

color pie and the mana system. Well, the

24:11

color pie and the mana system were the

24:13

two answers to this problem. One

24:15

was, the color pie says, okay, what

24:17

if I divvy up the strengths of the

24:19

game? I don't let any one deck

24:21

of access to everything. What if

24:23

I put them in different colors? And I guess

24:25

we have to check on the mana system

24:27

first. The mana system says, look, I evolve over

24:29

time. I am going to

24:31

make it, on turn one, you have

24:33

a little bit of your resource. On

24:35

turn 10, you have a lot of your resource. If

24:38

we make a man a system, a

24:40

system by which Spells have to be cast

24:42

and there's a resource and you gain resource

24:45

over the game. That means some cards are

24:47

valuable early because they're cheap and easy to

24:49

cast. Some are valuable because they're powerful you

24:51

can do later. But then you make a

24:53

curve of cards and the idea is because

24:55

the system changes over time and you want

24:57

to always be efficient, you want a variety

24:59

of cards, a curve of cards. You want

25:01

some cheap cards, some medium cards, some expensive

25:03

cards. You want at every moment of the

25:05

game to have access to make sure that

25:07

you can do things. And

25:09

the other thing the mana system did is

25:11

it said, okay, we can

25:13

diversify the mana system, meaning there's

25:15

different colors, but make the mana

25:17

system punish you for going too

25:19

broad. If you're only playing

25:21

one color, you'll always have the color you

25:23

need. If you're playing two colors, sometimes

25:26

you won't draw the second color. And the

25:28

more colors you add, the more likely

25:30

you don't have the color you need. So

25:32

the system pushes you toward playing less

25:34

colors and the color pie says, well, I'm

25:36

going to diversify what's going on. Certain

25:38

colors have certain strengths and certain weaknesses. The

25:41

nice thing also about that is if I'm

25:43

playing a certain color and my opponent knows

25:45

I'm playing that color, I have inherent weaknesses

25:47

so my opponent can then shift their deck

25:49

to adapt. And one of Richard's ideas was

25:51

that he didn't think like you build a

25:54

deck and you're done. Part of this is

25:56

you're going to play and play against other

25:58

people, probably play against your friends. And maybe

26:00

they're doing certain things and you adapt to

26:02

what they're doing. And the idea, and he

26:04

had this from the beginning, is you could

26:06

keep adapting your deck. Plus, as you buy

26:08

new cards, you have more things that you

26:11

can add. And so that was the idea,

26:13

is that the game is flexible and you

26:15

have the option to sort of pick and

26:17

choose your pieces. But then We just laid

26:19

in, he laid in a lot of things.

26:22

Things like color, like mana, like rarity,

26:24

things that sort of say, hey, there's

26:26

reasons why I might not put everything

26:29

or the most powerful thing in every

26:31

deck. And

26:33

the thing that's really interesting about it,

26:35

I mean, the thing that is fascinating to

26:37

me is, like

26:40

it's really compelling that

26:42

the three big sort of,

26:45

what I'll call hobby

26:47

lifestyle game, game types. are

26:49

all these bigger than the

26:51

box customizable things. Because if you're

26:53

gonna make a game and really, really get into

26:55

the game, you know, you want something

26:57

over and above, here's the experience that everybody experiences.

26:59

You want something where you just have a

27:02

lot of say in things. And that one of,

27:04

like I did a whole podcast on why

27:06

Magic is, you know, what makes Magic

27:08

so special. And a lot

27:10

of that is that you, the

27:12

game player, have so much agency

27:14

of what the game is. I

27:16

often joke like, with magic, you

27:18

know, you're the game designer. And

27:21

that is really true, that

27:23

you get to shape, I mean, and not

27:25

only that, magic has a lot of different

27:27

formats. You can choose how exactly

27:29

you play, you know, there's no

27:31

one way to play magic. It's a game system,

27:34

you know, it has shared rules, shared pieces, but

27:36

you have a lot of flexibility. And if

27:38

I want to draft and you want to play

27:40

commander, I mean, yeah, they're the

27:42

same game, but wow, those are really

27:44

different in what's going on. And

27:46

that was sort of Richard's dream. The

27:48

dream of bigger than the box is

27:50

that the game has this essence that

27:52

people get to experience the game in

27:55

different ways. And people have the ability

27:57

to adapt the game in different ways.

27:59

That you get to shift the game

28:01

to where you want to be. And

28:04

in normal games, like there's house

28:06

rules and things where like, okay, when

28:08

we land on free parking, you

28:10

get the money that people pay taxes to

28:12

or whatever, whatever rule you make up that

28:15

you add in, people can adapt games. So

28:17

it's not like, there's not a little bit

28:19

of that, but it's not quite the same

28:21

thing as the adaptation being built into the

28:23

game. And that, that is

28:25

something I think when you first

28:27

get into magic, the thing that's really

28:29

exciting about magic is, it

28:31

really makes you rethink what

28:33

a game is. I

28:36

remember when I first started playing Magic,

28:38

like the idea that, you know, after living

28:40

in a, you know, growing up in

28:42

a world where every board game had the

28:44

component pieces, and the rules told you

28:46

what pieces, you know, like, normally when you

28:48

play a game, the rules will say,

28:50

okay, go get five cards and one little

28:53

piece to represent you, and this much

28:55

paper money or whatever's telling you, and you

28:57

always start in the same place with

28:59

the same thing. And all of a sudden,

29:01

you're playing a game where it's like,

29:03

okay, you need 60 cards or

29:05

whatever the format is telling you. But like,

29:07

okay, well, you know, maybe it comes

29:09

from this certain subset of cards, but that

29:11

subset of cards is usually thousands of

29:13

cards, maybe tens of thousands of cards. And

29:15

it's like, okay, you have, like

29:18

I said, it is so liberating. It's

29:20

a very exciting thing. It's very cool. And

29:22

once again, video games really

29:25

dove deep on this. Video

29:27

games really... a lot

29:29

of the bigger -in -the -box things

29:31

that started Tabletop obviously became giant

29:33

in video games. But it is

29:35

an amazing concept and it's something

29:37

that's really cool and that it's

29:39

very easy when you get into

29:41

magic and just everything becomes the

29:43

norm to you to forget about

29:45

how different it is. You

29:48

know, the idea that like

29:50

imagine, just imagine like the way

29:52

you played Monopoly is you

29:54

opened up a Monopoly booster or

29:56

whatever. Oh, I opened up

29:58

Park Place. I opened up Kentucky Avenue. Oh,

30:01

I got a community chance card. Oh,

30:03

I got the dog. Like, you know what

30:05

I'm saying? And the idea that, like,

30:07

how you play the game only existed by

30:09

the things you had is really cool.

30:11

It's a really, really neat concept. And

30:14

it was very... Like, the thing about

30:16

magic that a lot of people forget

30:18

is there were so many different component

30:20

pieces of it that were just so

30:22

out there. A lot of times when

30:24

I talk about the Golden Tri -Factor,

30:26

like, it was... really was paving the

30:28

path in a very different place and

30:30

it it borrowed you can see the

30:33

Richard was influenced by miniatures influenced by

30:35

Cosmic Encounter influenced by role -playing like all

30:37

those things obviously had but he shaped

30:39

something new And as somebody who's been

30:41

continuing to shape this thing for a

30:43

long time It is a really neat

30:45

system. So that's why I wanted to

30:47

talk about it today Bigger than the

30:49

box is a very cool concept. And

30:51

so anyway, I hope you guys appreciate

30:53

it. This is a little more of

30:56

a Game design sort of dive

30:58

today, but I love doing that sort of

31:00

stuff. So anyway guys, I am at work though.

31:02

So we all know that means it's the

31:04

end of my drive to work. So instead of

31:06

talking magic, it's time for me to be

31:08

making magic. I'll see y 'all next time. Bye bye.